The Computational Analysis of Semantic Change Across Different Environments (CASCADE) network held its third doctoral training and research camp from 20th-22nd August at the University of Helsinki, where the network’s 10 PhD students, their supervisors plus a range of guest researchers came together. The aim of the event was to build on the Early Stage Researchers’ (ESR) understanding of the interplay between data, questions and methods, with participation from research colleagues from King’s College London (Mark J.Hill), the University of Turku (Antti Kanner) and the University of Helsinki Computational History Group.
Michael Pidd, Susan Fitzmaurice, Maria Jimena Flores, and Penelope Gia Bao Huu Nguyen attended as DHI/UoS representatives.
Three packed days of activities included ESR group work and presentations plus sessions on:
- The unreasonable effectiveness of language models for textual analysis
- Semantic Drift and Intellectual History
- Contrasting different computational approaches to the analysis of text and the types of relationships and patterns they uncover
For the final informal group session, delegates travelled to the small city of Porvoo on the J.L. Runeberg, a boat that was originally built in 1912.
CASCADE is a collaboration between University College Cork, University of Sheffield, University of Helsinki, KU Leuven, and Universität des Saarlandes. Funded by Horizon Europe under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Networks and the UKRO.
CASCADE responds to a skills deficit in the academic, public and commercial sectors: the need for people to be able to retrieve, critically evaluate and make better use of the large volumes of textual data that characterise our contemporary information society.